The Daily Worker Newspaper, August 2, 1924, Page 6

~ uno tive The General Staff of the World Revolution A View on the V Congress of the Communist International. By MOISSAYE J. OLGIN. This is the eleventh day of the Congress. More than half-of the work still remains undone. There will come out of the commissions a vast amount of leading principles and practical propositions as to the na- tional and colonial problem, the pea- sant problem, the trade unions, or- ganization and propaganda. There will, probably, be a number of deci- sions concerning the inner life of the most important parties of the Com- intern. Still, the heyday of the Congress is over. The debaté on the political re- port of the Executive Committee has been completed. A resolution approv- ing the policy of the Executive Com- mittee has been adopted by the whole Congress against eight dissenting votes. The character of the Congress ig now clear. All the rest of its work will only be an amplification of what is contained in this basic resolution. It would be futile to attempt a sur- wey of ten days’ debate in a newspa- per correspondence. There has been a wealth of Communist ideas poured forth in sixty-two speeches, some of which, reported stenographically, grew into fair size pamphlets: A brief analysis of this part of the Congress work alone will require a series of careful essays. What can be under- taken here is a few conclusions which force themselves upon every partici- pant as self-evident and beyond dis- pute. These conclusions become a certainty as discussion develops. They lay, so to speak, on the surface. 41. This is a Congress of parties. There was a time, said Comrade Zin- oviev in his report, when we were propaganda associations. We had no consciousness of being so, but we were no parties ag yet. We saw a mass of discontent in every country, and we thought that was an organ- ized. Communist force. How the situ- ation has changed. The seething of the masses referred to by Comrade Zimoviev, is smaller than it was four capital is fier¢er. The comparties work in a less favorable medium. Communists’ Work requires a solidly buiit organization, a pliability of tac- tics along a sharply drawn class line ot action illuminated by theoretical groundwork. As one listeng here to the reports of the various parties and to the passionate defense or denunci- ation of one policy or the other, one becomes aware that those are no more “societies fur the propaganda of Communisia,”, but political revolution- ary parties In action. The main par- ties of ite continent have a firm or- ganization. They have developed a strict discipline. They are deeply rovied in the masses of the prole- tariat. They are winning over large numbers of workers. Some are inass parties themselves. Aud they are hovked up with svery phase of the political, the economic, the social and the cultural life which has any rela- tion to the intcresis of the working class or to we future*0f the social revolution. They are political factors of first fmportance. 2. This is a Congress of revolution- ary parties. Revolution here is no abstraction, no pious desire. Revo- lution is the daily bread of most dele- gates here assembled. Europe is be- ing shaken by revolutionary convul- sions these last six years, and many parties have, actually participated in proletarian upheavals. Here are the Italian Communists who fought bloody battles against their bourgeoisie and against the Fascisti. Here are the Bulgarian representatives of a party which as late as September, 1923, conducted a series of armed insur- rections. Here are the Poles in whose country there was a workers’ revolt on the sixth of November, 1923, in Cracow. Here are the German com- rades, steeled in numerous _insurrec- tionz und bitter against their former right wing leaders who are blamed for not having ied the masses into baitle t& seize power last October. And here are the members of the Rua- sian Communist party which heads the proletarian dictatorshig sitice Oc- tober, 1917, atter @ glorious revolu~ on, "No, revolution here is not a theo- retical conception formulated on the basis of scientific speculation. Revo- lution is a fiery reality. It has not yet won a victory in any of the Eu- ropean countries, but it is daily nourished by the decomposition of capitalism, by growing .burdens of militarism, by increasing ferocity of despairing bourgeoisie, by deepening misery and Starvation of the work- ers, by the avalanche of an agrarian crisis, by mounting discontent of col- onial peoples, by the bankruptcy of social-democratic and trade union bu- reaucratic leaders who are helping to mend the breaches in the structure of exploitation. The revolution is in the very tissue of .uropean social organ- ization. This is why the Congress talks of revolution as if it were the most commonplace order of busi- ness. This is why the delegates talk of preparations for revolutionary fights as if they were members of a military general staff in war time. This is war time in Europe. There may be a lull in military activities, but the war is on. for battle continues. A detail: some of the parties here The maneuvering Testing the | comrades. and more decisive, not because the Russian Communist party is dimin- ishing in influence, but because’ the other parties become more consoli- dated and gain in experience. The German party is a force at the pres- ent congress,. Next come the French Third in importance are Italy and Czecho-Slovakia, the former for the revolutidnary possibilities the Italian situation is fraught ‘with, the latter for its solid party of 130,000 in a country whose entire population hardly exceeds thirteen million. Due to the key position of Great Britain among imperialist states, the British Communist party is given much at- tention. Western communism is a very active force both at the plenary sessions of the congress and in the numerous commissions. Ruth Fisher, the leader of the German Communist party,.has been the reporter of the most important congress commission —the commission on the political re- port of the executive committee. Thalheimer, tho of the minority of the German party, is co-reporter, with Bucharin, on the program question. 4. This is a left congress. We do not mean to say that the fourth world Dawes Pian. represented are illegal in their coun- tries. Some delegates have come to Moscow under assumed names and may face grave dangers upon return- img. Bat nobody scems to be upset over such prospects. They are taken for gtauted. They are a part of re- volutiouary life. “legality” today may turn out dictatorstip tomorrow, nd prise is an tutexral element of a Comm : st career. 3. This is a Eurepean Congress. There was a tine when an interna- tional Communist congress resembled a full sized man surrounded by Lili- putians. The Russian Communist Party loomed up as the one and only great mass party consolidated into fighting batallions. The others were in a process of formation. The cen- ter of gravity, therefore, lay in the East of Europe. Russia not only led, Russia dictated. The word of Russia was law. In the present Congress, the leading influences of the Russian Communists remain in full force. The wisdom, insight, experience, knowledge of the best Russian com- rades animates the whole Internation- al as ever before. The loss of the greatest of all political leaders, Lenin, leaves, of course, a colossal gap; his leadership can be replaced by none; yet, all the other brains ef the Rus- sian revolution are at wogl, and the western Communists look up at them for direction, aid, criticism, approval, Still, the center of gravity is grad- ually moving westward. The Euro- pean partieS become a factor more congress was more moderate. The line of policy of the Communist In- ternational is a straight one for win- ning the masses of the proletariat in every country in order to head their revolutionary battles for power. The fourth congress drew this line as firmly and with as much convic- tion as it is being done at present. There is, however, a difference in the temper of the delegations. Be- tween the fourth and the fifth con- gress some Communist leaders have tried to interpret the united front tactics and especially the slogan of a farmer-labor government in an op- portunist fashion. Such interpreta- tion proved injurious in Germany, in Bulgaria, in Poland. The bulk of the party membership has overthrown the opportunistically inclinéd leader- ship in the German party and re- placed it by avleft executive commit- tee; the party membership is working up to a repudiation of compromising tendencies in nearly every section of the cominatern. Past experiences give the delegates a special zest, a heated animation in combatting the right opponents. The words “oppor- tunist inclinations” and “opportunist deviations” are spoken of with con- tempt and derision. One has no pa- tience with discredited right opposi- tions, One has no interest for differ- ces between “right,” “right center,” and “center.” The barometer of the congress points decidedly towards the left, which means Bolshevism and le revolution. Back of this tendency is an iron- clad conviction that Europe is head- ing towards a revolution, that capital- ism is bankrupt, that the contradic- tions of capitalism and imperialism cannot be cured within the frame- work of bourgeois society, that even if there is a temporary halt in the downward trend of the present social and economic order, its final break- down is unavoidable and approaching with fatal sureness, In such a his- toric era, every detail of Communist preparations may become of moment- ous consequences in the near future, Every aberration may prove disas- trous. This conviction, on the other hand, is based on a new powerful factor without which one cannot understand revolutionary Europe of today: the new proletarian generation. In the last six-seven years, millions of young workers have grown into manhood, millions of sturdy modern fighters who have not gone thru the old school of social-democratic adaptations, who have not lost their spirit in the cru- cible of disappointments following the war and its hideous “peace,” who have retained a great source of un- exhausted energy and have no pa- tience with the existing order of things. It is the impetus of this young seneration, unspoiled, unbiased in favor of compromises with capitalist order, untouched by the poison of vourgeois psychology, which is the driving power back of the new left leaders of European Communist parties. It is they, the millions of post-war proletarians, and not the old, tired, worn-out middle aged workers of the old type, who will be in the first ranks of the revolution. 5. This is a Congress of Bolsheviza- tion. The most feverish interest is given tothe problems of the United front tactics and the FarmerLabor government slogan. ‘They are the nerves of the congress, the throb- bing heart of all the discussion. They have been thrust upon the Comiun- ist parties by the recent develop- ments in bourgeois states and by the practice of revolutionary struggle. party is of paramount importance. The practice of the German Comp- The German leaders of the right wing are branded for having failed to lead the werking class into a battle for power last October. The Brandler group is accused of having allowed itself to be caught inthe net of bour- geois democratic parliamentarism when the German Communists en- tered the Saxon government last fall. There are no words hot enough to express the scorn of the German dele- : gates when they speak of the Chem- nitz conference at which- the right wing leaders failed to issue a call for insurrection. What was the reason for such hestitation, they ask. And their answer is: because the Brandler group believed in organic co-opera- tion with the Social-Democracy on the basis of the constitution; because the right wing Communists were afraid of losing contact with the left wing social-democratic leaders; because they were not free from the inherit- ance of the past—from parliamentary democratic illusions; because they misuaderstood and misinterpreted the tactics of the united front and the slogan of a labor-farmer government which must be’ a revolutionary tactic and @ revolutionary slogan. Nor is this wrong application of a correct set of principles confined to _ the German party alone. Over and over again representatives of the - various countries appeal to the Con- gress against opportunist deviations in their respective parties. There is, for instance, the Checho-slovakian par- ty whose conference adopted a reso- lution to the effect that the workers’ government can be a peaceful transi- tion to the proletarian dictatorship, There is the Swedish Communist par- ty where a portion of the Central Executive Committee was against the centralization of the Communist In- ternational and where a noted leader showed strange aberrations in the question of religion. There is a tend- ency towards peaceful compromises in the Bulgarian Comm party, All such shortcomings under a (Continued on Hage 3.) _